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Two stories that meet in the Glénan Islands

We are Jérôme and Virginie, a blended family in our fifties. The children have grown up; the youngest, Virginie’s daughter, is finishing her studies. Virginie works in micronutrition and health. Jérôme spent twenty years in industry before founding his own companies in timber construction and renovation.

Nothing destined us for the sea. Jérôme does not come from a sailing family. At twenty, just out of school, he helped a friend prepare his boat for an Atlantic crossing. A crew member dropped out, and he was offered the place. Two boats set off… and then Murphy’s law:

• the other boat’s water tanks burst;
• we had to raft up and make for a port;
• an engine sank;
• a storm joined in.

The crossing never happened. The boat ended up in Sète, France — the very place where our catamaran is moored today.

Then came ten years on Saint Martin, in the Caribbean, from 1993 to 2001. Jérôme lived on a marina, went out to sea with friends, and crewed for a skipper friend. He learned the basics of sailing, no more: “I don’t have a lot of sailing experience.”

Then, for years, neither of us talked about boats. Until August 2022. On holiday in Brittany, we paddled around the Glénan archipelago by kayak. In the distance, boats at anchor. “What if we went to take a closer look?” Virginie then told me about her summer holidays on a catamaran, and how much she had loved them. Our two stories met that day. Six months later, we had ordered our boat.

Orphea, our floating home

We are not born sailors. We were looking for a floating home:

• a boat easy to handle as a couple, or even alone;
• comfortable without being huge;
• and within our budget.

It would be a catamaran, an Aventura 37.

We chose a new boat because buying second-hand scared us. No history, no follow-up, and the risk of a bad surprise after an incomplete survey. How could we trust it?

In June 2024, we collected Orphea ourselves in Tunisia, with a skipper friend who has several circumnavigations behind him. Three and a half days sailing north, much of it upwind. Our skipper was pleased with the boat. As for us, we were discovering everything.

Thousands of questions

Taking over Orphea is when we understood: we knew almost nothing about our boat. A handover takes a few hours. Truly knowing a boat — every piece of equipment, every manual, every setting — takes years. And we had thousands of questions.

The first one was vital. Jérôme had just received the boat’s MMSI number: where do you enter it so that Orphea shows up on AIS? The old-fashioned answer: open the manuals, press every button, hunt for the right menu.

Then came the fuse. The main cut-off fuse on the inverter kept blowing. Replaced once, twice, three times, without understanding why. It took handing the manual’s 300 or so pages to an artificial intelligence to find the answer: the right fuse was 400 amps. Not 130.

That is where Hullteam was born. The idea: gather every manual and every paper of the boat, and be able to ask a simple question, as if someone who knew Orphea by heart were sitting right in front of us, at any hour of the day or night.

What Hullteam has become

The idea took root when we bought the boat, two years ago. For the past six months, Jérôme has devoted himself to it alongside his job. Along the way, the tool has become much more than a memory aid.

First of all, it is the boat’s maintenance log, free: maintenance, engines, equipment, papers, manuals, due dates. Every job is dated and sealed, and can be confirmed by the professional who did it. Even after the fact: an owner who kept their invoices can rebuild their boat’s history.

That is exactly what we were missing the day we gave up on second-hand. On the day of the sale, the owner publishes a verified file that the buyer views for free: a boat that has been looked after, and can prove it. Enough to reassure a buyer, and no longer have to defend your price on your word alone. And for those looking, the listing describes the boat with more than a hundred pieces of equipment, to find the one that has what really matters to them.

Then there is Hully, the offer that goes further:

• clearance for entering a country;
• checklists and emergency sheets;
• seasonal prevention;
• the assistant that answers our questions by searching our 500-page manuals itself.

Hullteam is hull, and the team around it — a name found by Virginie. Hully is its nickname. Its emblem, a sea turtle, is Orphea’s own.

The team around the hull: professionals

A boat does not look after itself. So Hullteam is also, in large part, for marine professionals, craftsmen first and foremost. They follow the boats entrusted to them all year round:

• fleet managers;
• maintenance and concierge services, who look after boats entrusted to them by owners;
• boatyards, for maintenance and repair;
• mechanics, for engines;
• yacht brokers, who keep the log of the boats they sell up to date. A free page, to link from their listings, shows all of the boat’s equipment: a complement to the listing and a sales aid;
• marine surveyors.

When an owner or a manager needs a job done, Hully’s assistant helps them put their quote request into words. It goes out to the professionals working in the boat’s area, with what they need to quote accurately: the boat, the equipment concerned, its serial number, its data sheet. They reply online, in a few clicks. The owner receives several quotes and chooses who to work with.

The idea is not to stay locked in your own port. Orphea is in Sète: a professional from La Grande-Motte or Canet-en-Roussillon who travels to Sète also receives the request. The right professional is not necessarily the closest one, but the most skilled, with the best value for money.

A version for boat builders and dealers is in the works. Every new boat will be set up as it leaves the yard, before delivery: the new owner receives a boat whose log, equipment and manuals are already in place. The yard or the dealer then handles after-sales service through Hullteam, relying on the equipment records and their traceability: which equipment, which serial number, which job, and when.

And now, the open sea

We are not retired: Hullteam has become much more than a tool for us, it is also our project for the years ahead.

The plan, as far as you can plan at sea:

• a tour of the Mediterranean for two or three years, ideally from 2027;
• then the Canaries, Cape Verde and the Atlantic crossing, perhaps to Brazil rather than the Caribbean.

The goal: to live aboard for as long as possible.

For Hullteam, the ambition is simple: to become the reference app for boating, the one that brings the essentials together. What comes next will be decided with the most experienced sailors who use it. It will also involve mutual help between sailors, on technical and practical matters: advice and good tips from those who know.